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Wendy Yenner hasn't added a story.
My four year old daughter and I escaped very bad family (domestic) violence. We left her father with nothing but our lives and the shirts on our backs and ran for our lives.
I knew we had lost everything, but this seemed insignificant compared to escaping with our lives. Over the last year, my little girl and I have battled to regroup, recover from the trauma and rebuild our lives. I knew it was not going to be easy. I did not anticipate how hard it would be.
But we have moved slowly step by step to understand that you never really fully recover from the impacts of family violence, you just learn to live with it. We had no family support and less than a handful of supportive friends to help us through. None of them lived close by us.
Our dream now is to apply all we have learned in our own experience, to realise a seemingly unreachable goal for us right now, to own our own home, and to have one single spare room available for women/children trying to learn to live with (and as much as possible heal from) the family violence they have experienced. Our dream is not to run a service or a refuge. It is simply to provide love, care and support in a warm and accepting environment. Refuges and Shelters do a great job for women and kids, particularly when women are first escaping violence, but the need for support and understanding is ongoing, and can be needed for years.
What you really need are friends, and these are usually the first thing you lose when you choose to leave violence. My little girl and I have probably not had any harder lives than others really, and we have tried to cope with what we have been through by throwing ourselves into helping other women and kids living with or leaving violence.
I don't expect a free ride. I work two jobs, recieve no government payments, and I do a lot of volunteer work. I would like my daughter to have the things that matter to a child who has experienced trauma, a pet dog or cat, a stable home, a place where she can learn to build a strong sense of helping others and compassion - none of these things can be achieved alone by a single mother, working more than fulltime in rental accomodation.
I want to raise money to purchase a house for my daughter and myself - and have a spare room open to any woman and/or child needing support, kindness and a caring environment to be in. It's not about therapy, it's not about providing endless actvities to divert people away from their experience. It's about walking alongside people, one family at a time, and providing a beautiful space to "decompress" and regroup, with food, laughter, sharing and friendship. I will provide all other costs on an ongoing basis through my wages from working.
I really don't know if people will support this. But it is our dream. One thing I have learned is that it takes courage to ask for help when you need it. I am asking for help. Please contribute 1 dollar (or more if you can) to the 1 Dollar Dream 2014 project. 1 dollar might change the future for 1 family at a time...
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